For those men and women out there looking for someone or something to blame for their pattern baldness, go ahead and blame DHT. Some of you may have never heard this term before and yet have been balding for years. Well, this is the hormone that is responsible for hair loss. It stands for dihydrotestosterone (di-hy-dro-test-ost-er-one). Don't worry, you won't be quizzed later.

Everyone has DHT in his or her body. It is essentially a male hormone; if you hadn't noticed yet, it has "testosterone" in its name. It comes into play in a big way when a boy is going through puberty. It helps with facial hair and male reproductive organ development. However, as with many hormones that are essentially male or female, the opposite sex has a smaller amount.

What DHT Does

Even though this hormone was quite helpful earlier in life, an excess of it can cause pattern baldness. This excess comes directly from genes. You inherit extra DHT. When scientists have compared these hormone levels between a balding scalp and a hairy one, the balding one had much higher numbers. When this hormone reaches the scalp, it attaches to the hair follicles and begins to destroy the blood supply to the hair.

Dihydrotestosterone shrinks the hair follicles so that growth ceases to be possible. However, the follicles are not dead and therefore may be stimulated for growth again. There is nothing in the body that will do this naturally. When pattern baldness sets in, you're stuck with it. What you can do is look into some of the treatments on the market and see which one works for you.